the sound of silence
by a warrior queen
Summary: Hello darkness my old friend. I've come to speak with you again. —SasuSaku.


**dedication: **To Sara and Rhea and Paige.  
**summary: **Hello darkness my old friend. I've come to speak with you again.  
**notes: **Naturally all the subtly in chapter 634 would attract me. And confuse me. And this is NOT what I think of the chapter, so much as I had made this post about parallels (which I normally hate making because no). And this is what came out.

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**The Sound of Silence**

There's a throb, somewhere; he feels it all through his body. Like a bell chime, loud and vibrating throughout his entire body, shaking his nerves and bubbling the adrenaline shots coursing in his blood. His eyes are wide—black and red with the Mangekyo Sharingan, thick lashes shadowing sharp cheekbones and thin lips curled into a sneer.

He doesn't know what is driving him, at that very moment, but Sasuke cannot say he cares.

Because he doesn't.

Now, all he wants is to watch it all fall, burn and scream—god, the Juubi's screams are like music, so soothing, so marvelously _haunting_—and the black fire that consumes it is rather beautiful. His chest rises and falls unevenly and he wants to say he remembers a feeling like this. It comes in images of a girl, pink haired choppily cut, bruises and cuts all over her body and a boy rising from the ground so furious, so ready to kill everything in his way and take down the sorry fools that dared lay a hand on her.

He remembers that fury.

He feels it right then.

And he cannot say he knows what summoned it all.

But he cradles it in the spaces in between his bones, tucks them deep into the marrow and throws all common sense to the wind.

He knows this route better. This path of destruction and nothing but this inexplicable rage as his fuel. He feels at home, here—not standing side by side with two people he probably knows, but are too far out of the mist for him to recognize. Not fighting with them as if he could even care about remembering the dynamics they once had—acknowledge that it's still there? No.

This is a path he walks alone and he enjoys it.

Aoda lowers his head and Sasuke drops to the ground, limbs shaking, his hands gripping the handle of his chokutō with a death grip that makes it shake.

There's something throbbing, somewhere in his body.

It feels like hate.

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And suddenly Sakura finds herself sprinting. Short hair whipping at the back of her neck, Katsuyu hanging onto her shoulder murmuring to herself and healing what little strength she has lost. She's zig-zagging through the shinobi, jumping up high over their heads, twisting around for leverage.

She can think of nothing else but running towards that back—that fan that haunts her dreams and stamps itself in her mind as if she'd ever have the courage to forget it.

In her heart, she knows something is wrong and even if everyone else is as optimistic and Naruto is in a high that pumps Team Seven into his veins, she will not be blind. She's never blind—she has never been blinded because Sakura knows long before it's even a reality.

It's in the way her heartbeat falters—kabum, badum, badum, badabum—and the way it becomes difficult to swallow and just breathing takes all the energy out of her.

But this won't be a repeat.

She will not let it happen again.

The darkness cannot have him, anymore. He is theirs.

Sakura will not follow anyone into the dark; she'll pull him out, instead.

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"Sasuke-kun."

Such display.

A moment is stolen as those that fight in the war watch the Juubi burn alive. Its screams are still loud, shattering the sound of silence and causing the stars themselves to twinkle in their panic. Sasuke stares at a jagged edge of a boulder, sticking up.

"Sakura."

"Not this time," she whispers.

Something in him pulses and suddenly he's looking at everything with wild eyes, ready to cause destruction—take down anything and everything in his way. He remembers this feeling, as well; it comes in an image of breaking arms and grinning at that sickening crack-crack-crack. The hollow thud of a useless idiot crumpling to the ground, writhing in inexplicable pain before succumbing to it and suddenly silence with nothing left to do but take down the ones that are left.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he sighs.

"Don't," she breathes out and it's nothing but a shudder. "Don't pretend like you're not going to do what you're going to do. I know you better than that."

"What am I going to do?"

"Leave."

"I was never back."

"You were!" And she's suddenly closer. "You were. You stood by us and you were here… With us. Why is it so difficult for you to stay?"

"Why do you c_are_?"

She doesn't reply and Sasuke feels the throbbing—it's in his chest, he realizes, throbbing and pulsing and eating away at everything he's worked for, every single decision he's made for himself is being devoured and replaced with black hate, ready to manipulate him once again, throw him off the edge and leave him there in the middle of everything for him to fend for himself without a single clue as to how he's gotten there—grow stronger and it causes him to grit his teeth and clench his hands tight until he feels the crescent indentations taking form and calling blood.

"Because you're Sasuke-kun," she finally says and she's suddenly right behind him. "Because you're my friend."

"No—"

"_Yes_. Yes you _are_! Why is it so hard for you to accept—why do you keep running?! What are you running towards if not _home_?!"

He shakes his head. "There is no home."

"Konoha is home."

"No it's not," he growls and the pulsing in his chest whispers up to his brain through his nervous system. It says that Konoha killed his family and Konoha killed his brother and Konoha is dead, dead, _dead_.

"Then we're home! Naruto, Kakashi-sensei and me—we're home. We're family—we're—"

He turns around, his eyes spinning and she's looking down, telltale tracks of tears down her cheek and why is she even crying? For a guy like him? She doesn't even know who he's become; nothing but a vessel for this hate to consume and eat him away, do things he's tired of doing and forget the vows he's made.

"Sakura."

"We're supposed to do this together. Team Seven needs to stop this war."

"I'm doing it _my _way."

"Sasuke-kun…"

"You don't know anything."

Sakura looks up at him and the green in her eyes are dark with determination and anger—it's nothing compared to the anger he's felt, manipulating and dark, but it's anger nonetheless and it spikes something within him. She's curling her lips into a sneer, thin brows furrowed. "Then make me understand."

"There's no time."

She snatches at his shirt. "Then you fight with us and you _make_ time afterwards. I'm not letting you go back in there." Her expression softens with sadness and hurt. "I'm not letting you go back into that dark place."

"I was never out."


End file.
